Long Thompson hits the road, not the airwaves

INDIANAPOLIS – Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson is spending the week touting her economic plan to voters around the state – trying to draw attention to her campaign after about a month without television advertising.

If Long Thompson can’t afford to hit the airwaves, it makes sense for her to hit the road in hopes of earning news coverage from local newspapers and television stations, said political analyst Brian Vargus.

“She has to go out and just do what she can,” Vargus said. “What else can she do?”
Long Thompson said her fundraising is going well and that she will be back on the air “very soon.” She said she always anticipated that her campaign would be off the air for a time before Nov. 4, when she faces Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and Libertarian Andy Horning in the general election.

“I have always believed that both television advertising and personal connections with voters are very important,” Long Thompson said. “You have to have both.”

Daniels has outraised and outspent Long Thompson. Quarterly campaign finance reports filed June 30 showed that Daniels spent nearly $7.3 million and still had $2.8 million left, while Long Thompson spent about $1.5 million and had a balance of $1.5 million.

Daniels has run television commercials continuously since March. Long Thompson aired her first general election commercial in July but hasn’t run a commercial for about four weeks.

On Tuesday, Long Thompson spoke to a group of about 200 Rotary Club members in Indianapolis, touting an economic recovery plan she said would simplify the state’s tax structure and give companies incentives for creating good jobs. She has scheduled visits this week in Terre Haute, Lafayette, Jeffersonville, Evansville, East Chicago, Fort Wayne and Mishawaka to talk about aspects of the plan.

Long Thompson said voters seem to like her message. A statewide poll released last week found that of 600 likely voters, 47 percent supported Daniels and 46 percent supported Long Thompson. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

“I have spent considerably less than Gov. Daniels, and we are in a virtual dead heat,” Long Thompson said. “I think it reflects that my campaign is resonating with voters all across the state, but I also think it is a reflection that Gov. Daniels’ policies are not working.”

Daniels campaign spokesman Cam Savage said that Daniels’ policies are working and noted that the governor has been ahead in all the polls, even if the margins are slim in some surveys. Daniels will be traveling the state before the election, talking to voters about his vision for the state, Savage said.

“He’ll be on the road throughout the last few weeks, just like he always is,” Savage said.

More campaign commercials from both Daniels and Long Thompson could crop up as Election Day nears. While it’s important for candidates to be on the air in the month before the election, the last two weeks are particularly important, Vargus said.
“It’s still a long way until the election,” Vargus said.